Motherhood Meets Mastectomies

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Accepting Help

I have a really hard time accepting help from other people. I usually feel like I should be the one helping someone else. This can be to my detriment. I do get a lot of help from my mother and she seems to be the only one that I can freely ask without feeling guilty (excluding my husband because we’re partners and that’s different). However, that’s not always the case; I often don’t want to bother her with something I know I can handle myself. When I went to pick up my daughter’s meds after the pediatrician’s appointment the other day, my mother had offered to go for me, but I said not to worry, I could get it. Fast forward to me standing in the pharmacy for an hour with the baby strapped to me, the 2 year old running around touching everything and a painful, albeit very sweet, attempt by the pharmacist to coax my daughter into taking her medicine. He tried everything from ‘what flavor should I make it?’ to ‘I’ll have some, if you have some’ to ‘Nope, this is just for me. You can’t have any.’ Nice try. I’m convinced she’s giving Scientology a shot because she’s got a near religious convinction: will NOT take medicine. (at least not that she knows of, spiking her PediaSure with a little amoxicillin usually does the trick)How I wish I had listened to my mother and accepted her help for that pharmacy errand. It got me thinking of all of the other things that I say I’ll do myself when smarter people have offered to help me knowing that I’m in over my head. I need to let go and accept help. My sister is 5 weeks post surgery and her community continues to bring her family meals. That is awesome and so nice that she doesn’t have to worry about her family eating well while she recovers. I would probably refuse help and my husband would end up eating frozen meatballs every night (and no, they wouldn’t be homemade).While he was away at the bachelor party, my mother stayed with me. It’s not that I couldn’t be with my girls by myself for the weekend and it pained me to put her out, but it was such a relaxed and enjoyable time with her there. It probably would have been difficult to distract my older daughter and do everything for both girls while maintaining my patience had she not been there. Instead, we all had a great time. Even though my first inclination is to do it all myself, I know the joy I get from helping others so I’m going to try not to deny others the same feeling by helping me. I’m hoping to maintain this new attitude post surgery. As usual, I’m a work in progress.